William Stoehr's art tickles the brain. Want to know why?

Where science meets art

Stoehr uses a block of charcoal on one of his paintings.
(
MARTY CAIVANO
)

William Stoehr is running a science experiment. But his lab doesn't have a microscope, petri dish or test tube.

His equipment is a fist-sized hunk of charcoal, a fat paintbrush, a bucket of red paint, a dish scrub and sandpaper.

Stoehr is an artist. You might not know it from peeking into his Boulder studio, but Stoehr is also fiddling with neuroscience -- delving deep into the subconscious chambers of the brain, and building bridges between visual perception and emotional response.

He points to one of his oversized charcoal face portraits. A little yellow in the eye here, paired with some purple over there, and suddenly the eyes look realistic. They seem to move. Two men recently said they felt judged by those eyes. People regularly burst into tears when they see Stoehr's paintings, although they don't -- or can't -- say why.

Creating art that evokes emotion is all about experiments and happy accidents.

Just like science, Stoehr says.

In fact, despite their seeming opposite sides of the spectrum a growing field called "neuro-aesthetics" believes that science and art are different sides of the same coin, and inspecting both sides can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the human brain.

Artists like Stoehr have begun studying neuroscience as a map to enhance their artwork. And scientists have begun more seriously considering visual art, music and architecture to glimpse inside the head of not just the artists, but also the people who interact with the work.

It's the science of aesthetics and beauty. In other words, how the brain processes, responds to and creates art.

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This collaboration could lead to an improvement in education and medicine down the road, according to advocates, such as the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute. For example, if you knew how to design a room in a way that triggered the brain to heal, it would change the way we design hospitals.

The institute recently sponsored a conference called "The Science of the Arts." Among the speakers: neuroscientists, researchers and a molecular biologist.

And Stoehr, the Boulder painter.

William Stoehr works on details around the eyes of one of his portraits.
(
MARTY CAIVANO
)

Artists have foretold -- on some intuitive level -- what neuroscientists are just now discovering, the symposium suggested.

Historically, artists have sought out to paint pictures of curvy women. Later, neurologists discovered the brain has more receptors for curves, making humans pre-programmed to prefer curves to straight lines.

The brain is also set up to prefer line drawings of faces to realistic portrayals, and the eyes are drawn to the area of the greatest contrast between the brightest bright and the darkest dark.

Stoehr didn't know any of this when he began painting six years ago, although these traits are fundamental of his artwork and could explain his quick pathway to popularity. (Stoehr's artwork now hangs in a temporary exhibit at the Denver International Airport and soon will be in the State Capitol.)

"Scientists wanted to know how I knew to do it," Stoehr says. How did he use lines and luminance to trigger emotions?

That would be the topic of his Johns Hopkins presentation. The only catch? He didn't exactly know how.

Stoehr has never taken an art class. One day, he says he just decided to quit his job as the president of National Geographic's mapping group to pursue a different path.

His only artistic strategy: To make a lot of accidents.

Through trial and error, he says he discovered concepts that art schools teach, stuff like "equal luminance," and how to use "discordant color" to bring a portrait to life. But Stoehr doesn't worry about the jargon, and he says he never paints to try to evoke a certain response.

"I don't even think about it while I'm painting. I just draw what I see," he says. "That's, in some way, the key: Disengaging the brain."

It's kind of ironic from a neuro-aesthetics perspective: turning off the brain to open up understanding of the brain.

Even the trademark of Stoehr's art -- splashes of red or orange paint across the charcoal faces -- is random. Sometimes he asks the subject to throw it. (All of the women he paints are Boulderites, like a woman working at a coffee shop on Pearl Street.)

Nathan is no art critic. He's the professor of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine. His interest in art centers on how the images are processed in the retina and brain, and how we alter these images.

"What comes in at every stage is altered," Nathans says. "It's not like we get a perfect movie of the outside world projected on a little screen inside our brain."

Our brains filter, distort and suppress different aspects of what we see. Think about eyewitness testimony in court. Witnesses will swear on their mother's grave that that man was the perpetrator. But these accounts are highly unreliable, despite the certainty in their memory.

"Many times, we think we have an accurate perception of the world when, in fact, we have colored it, both literally and figuratively, with our expectations and experiences," Nathans says.

Understanding how a normal brain works can provide insight into how to rehabilitate brains after a stroke or with debilitating diseases, Nathans says.

Here's where art comes in.

"Visual art taps into the brain circuits by, at some level, bypassing the analysis that we're doing when we look at a general scene," he says.

Think about how a painting or a song can stir up buried emotions that you suppress in your day-to-day life. A man looks at Stoehr's painting and says he feels judged. Art can reach around the brain's filters and set off thoughts before you see them coming. A woman breaks into tears when she looks into the portrait's eyes. She doesn't know why. But her brain is firing away in a way that fascinates scientists like Nathans.

Nathans says Stoehr's paintings tap into the mind on two different levels. Consciously, you see the portrait. Subconsciously, the red sprays of paint create a mood. The painting stimulates two different parts of the sensory system, he says. Plus, the haphazard red splotches catch your attention because they are unexpected, Nathans says. A part of you feels like he has defaced his own painting, and this creates tension.

It's fascinating, Nathans says, from a purely scientific point of view.

"I think a lot of art is that way," he says. "You get inputs into your system, and you can't put your finger on why you like it, but you do. Understanding art can help us understand the subconscious part of the brain and the real that way we perceive the world."

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